Cistercian numerals

The Cistercians eventually abandoned the system in favor of the Arabic numerals, but marginal use outside the order continued until the early twentieth century.

[2] The two dozen or so surviving Cistercian manuscripts that use the system date from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and cover an area from England to Italy, Normandy to Sweden.

In one known case, Cistercian numerals were inscribed on a physical object, indicating the calendrical, angular and other numbers on the fourteenth-century astrolabe of Berselius, which was made in French Picardy.

In 1533, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim included a description of these ciphers in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

), with a short vertical stroke in place of the dot, or even with a triangle joining to the stave, which in other manuscripts indicated a 9.

)[16] When the system spread outside the order in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, numbers into the millions were enabled by compounding with the digit for "thousand".

For example, a late-fifteenth century Norman treatise on arithmetic indicated 10,000 as a ligature of ⌋ "1,000" wrapped under and around ⌉ "10" (and similarly for higher numbers), and Noviomagus in 1539 wrote "million" by subscripting ¬ "1,000" under another ¬ "1,000".

Historian Ann Moyer lauded King for re-introducing the numerical system to a larger audience, since many had forgotten about it.

[23] Moritz Wedell, however, called the book a "lucid description" and a "comprehensive review of the history of research" concerning the monks' ciphers.